Graphic novels and ‘comics’ storytelling represent a growing genre in publishing these days. It includes not only the familiar sci-fi and criminal strip cartoons with their extreme foreshortening of hands and feet and their Baaaam!!! Flash*!# Aargh!* constantly exploding balloons, but serious literature too, such as for example, Proust and Kafka by the Frenchmen Stéphane … Continue reading Joe Sacco: Visual journalist
Huh, Khartoum? Are you crazy? Don’t go there, it’s dangerous! Many people react this way when you tell them you’re going to Sudan. It’s the almost generic fear they harbor about places in Africa that don’t involve safari-holidays. Being a square peg in a round hole in many ways, I’d be the one to be … Continue reading Sudan #3: Pro-Democracy protests in Khartoum
In 1884 the Sudan was in turmoil. That’s not unusual you may say: it’s been in turmoil right up to today – and you’d be right. But the issue at that time was that a 50,000-strong army led by the up-and-coming charismatic Muslim Messianic leader Muhammad Ahmed (the ‘Mahdi,’ the chosen one) began to surround … Continue reading Sudan #2: A foot trek across the Bayuda desert
From age 18 to 29, I smoked Camels. Known to be strong – and thus ‘masculine!’ – cigarettes, with its package showing a camel in the desert and pyramids in the background, the smoking habit supported my ‘seventies self-presentation of a non-conformist, independent and tough broad. Helpful make-belief, when you travel solo in strange places. … Continue reading Sudan #1: About Camels
In 2019, I spent two months in Africa: one in Sudan for a desert crossing on foot and another in South Africa to visit friends. Both were unforgettable and unusually rich experiences. There was so much happening every day that I wrote more than seventy pages of impressions, detailed information, names, places and moods, interspersed … Continue reading Sketch Kvetch
